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World Cyber Games: Part II

What's it like doing play-by-play on a video game competition? Charles Jade …

Introduction

Before the November rains wash epochal layers of urine and feces from San Francisco streets into the Bay, the fog rolls back and all is blue sky and mild temperatures in October. It was a beautiful day for the Cyberlympics, and it's only fair to credit Samsung for their cyber-organizing prowess. Who says the corporate takeover of sports has to be hostile? Samsung made the games run on time this year. It's too bad the intrepid reporter couldn't get past the Media registration booth.

"You should have let me in," he softly reprimanded, sounding almost sorry for the frazzled, almond-eyed, hottie registration chic. "I could have got you published in a hundred newspapers," he added, turning and walking away, and you wonder if in his own mind he expected her to pull out a finely polished blade and disembowel herself for dissing him.

It wasn't me, just some "media" guy trying to bluster a press pass, dressed in shorts, sandals and three days of old-growth beard. He was not alone. Large numbers of loud talking Europeans filtered through, dressed in filthy jeans and huge, studded metal belts. They stood in line, shoulder to shoulder with very small brown people from Asia who have no concept of personal space, smoking cigarettes by the handful. The scent of cloves or manure started to make separate my soul from my body so I turned away, crossing the blocked off street to the huge green space being converted into a "festival" area.

Besides the tent pavilions for major corporate sponsors, there were a number of diversions available to watch or participate in. Here is a demonstration of FPS game weaponry scaled up to the real world. By setting up speakers as large as minivans and applying low hertz waveforms about killing police and bitch slapping a 'ho at decibel levels comparable to a space shuttle launch, sound is converted into a physical force, propelling cyclists up ramps and into the air, where they perform several complete revolutions before landing again, sometimes without impacting their heads on the concrete.

In conjunction with the cyclists were skateboarders performing as human metronomes, riding up and down concave ramps for hours at a time. Local law enforcement had an ongoing demonstration on herding homeless without leaving marks. There was a huge, inflatable fun house for all the kids, and an actual trapeze ride for children who were unwanted by their parents. Then there was the entertainment.

Bad stick martial arts took to the stage, as women in tights who did not know anything about staff fighting engaged in playful, mildly arousing, mock combat, while men who presumably did know something, pretended not to be hit in the stomach and fall down in pain.

Buffy the Geek Fantasy Slayer and the Dancing Tourettes might have caused a riot of undersexed teen males, were it not for security forces on hand with shock batons and sandbag shotguns. It was kind of odd, in that it seemed like the only thing for gamers to do was to hang around in the sun. You would think most people would be practicing, but you would be wrong. There was a group of European gamers sitting on the white laws chairs near the main stage looking bored.

"English?" I asked, hoping we would be able to communicate without an interpreter.

"No, " said a guy with curly black hair. "We are Norwegian. See the flag on our shirts?"

Ah. We both spoke smart-ass. That was good. "Actually, I was wondering if you spoke English because I'm an American, so I only need one language."

Stares.

I decided to be direct. "Why aren't you practicing?"

"Let me tell you tell you something," a blond guy interjected forcefully. "I am the team leader for Counter-Strike. We have no equipment for practice. I was told we will sit down at the tournament, then twenty minutes later we will play."

That was interesting. Certainly, it was difficult to imagine athletes showing up at the Olympics in Athens and getting twenty minutes to warm up before the high dive competition.

"Well, I am sure everyone will have the same rules, but I will check." The PR guy I asked said "don't quote them on that," but it probably wouldn't have mattered, as Team3D from the USA was pretty heavily favored, so I did.

The proud symbols of the many nations were prominently featured at the Cyberlympics, and they had country flags too. The smallest and weakest team members were forced to parade around with flags at the opening ceremony. Creative Labs was handing out t-shirts like a reverse clothing drive, even a homeless guy picking one up and preparing to add it to the fifty or so layers he wore. It caught the eye.

"What do you think of all this?" I asked him.

"Man! That's my sun!" He held out a dark and weathered arm, pointing to a spot near a huge white tent emblazoned with the familiar corporate signage of Creative Labs.

"Yeah," I said sympathetically. "They say you would rather be dead then have motherboard audio."

"Huh?" He stopped his jerky motions, like a bot having broken from its subroutine guarding a darkened corridor.

"The Audigy 2 ZS refines the definitive standard in sound cards." I motioned to the words on the shirt. "It's why people wouldn't be caught dead with motherboard audio.

"Mothers gonna be dead! I live here, man," and he raised a fist to the sky, the shirt balled around it. "You understand what I'm sayin'?!"

"Yeah, I do, and I will tell them that. Right now." It was time to go, as I had no interest in turning humor at the expense of the destitute into a personal tragedy.

All that was left was to wait for dark and the opening ceremony. Of course, it got cold as hell, but that didn't stop the loud music or high school bands desperate for attention. In the end a bunch of gamers paraded across a stage with flags. There were enthusiastic welcomes and words about sportsmanship and fun, and then everybody got someplace warm.

Inside, besides the tournament arena, were two smallish convention type rooms. One was a BYOC gaming area where people could pay money to set up their own computer and play games. Something that they could have done on the Internet from their own, or their parents' home for free, but if it got them out of the house all to the good.

The other room was the exhibition center. Creative Labs loves to exhibit. They had an incredibly loud display inside composed of a wall of sound that tore the flesh off anyone attempting to pass during demos. The NVIDIA people were showing off that elf pr0n video. A chic from Blizzard was on hand letting people play the World of WarCraft beta, which is very pastel but very cool.

Shuttle Computer, supplier of glossy black XPCs to the Cyberlympics, was selling the svelte machines for $1099 a unit, Pentium 4 3.4 GHz and NVIDIA GeForce 6600 included. And Razor, the gaming mouse people, had young fem hotties going down in shooters. It was like sex without touching, watching them play the boys, all concentration intermixed with giggles and sudden exclamations.

By then it was getting late, time for a cold shower and sleep before the next day's main event, the Cyberlympics Game Conference.